Me and My Electric

Me and My Electric is an inspired idea for a book. It came out of a Save the Children Fund conference called 'Invisible Children' which was attended by writers, publishers, directors and programme makers who acknowledged the invisibility of disabled children in their work. This book aims to rectify some of that. Seven disabled young people were linked with seven well established children's authors, Elizabeth Laird, jacqueline Wilson and Rachel Anderson among them, to help them to tell the stories of their lives. The adult reader might be able to glimpse the writer's hand - all the stories are readable and well structured, but the content of these funny, energetic, powerful stories is the children's own. In her introduction Laird quotes a disabled person (I like to think it was me), saying to her 'We don't want people to say how awful life is for us, or how wonderful we are, but how we are different and how we are the same.' That is what these stories are all about. An essential read.